This invention relates generally to transportation containers, and more specifically to systems and methods for containing and/or transporting wind turbine components.
Wind turbines can be comprised of large components, such as, rotor blades, hubs, towers and nacelles. Wind turbine rotor blades are used to generate electrical power from the wind, and can be rather large (e.g., some exceeding up to 200 feet or more in length and up to 12 feet or more in width). Because of their size and/or fragility, some known large rotor blades may be damaged during transportation from where the rotor blades are manufactured to where the rotor blades are used. Rotor blades can be damaged during the loading or unloading from known transportation containers or vehicles. Such damage may degrade performance of the blade.
Wind turbine components may come in a variety of different sizes and shapes. Accordingly, at least some known transportation containers are sized to fit the largest component, which may increase the weight and overall size of transporting smaller components. An alternative to using containers uniformly sized to the largest component is to provide different containers for differently sized components. However, providing differently sized containers may increase the cost and/or difficulty of transporting custom sized containers. Containers of various sizes may present logistical difficulties in that containers of the proper size may or may not be available for each shipment or manufacturing process. Transportation equipment (e.g., overhead cranes, trucks, etc.) may not be designed to handle non-standard size shipping containers.
Shipping containers may be transported using multiple modes of transportation, (e.g., by ship, truck, and/or rail). Many modes of transportation have restrictions on large loads, for example height and/or width limits thereof. For example, when transporting large loads over land, the container height may sometimes be limited to about four meters, or about twelve feet. The height and width limits help to ensure containers clear bridges, overpasses, and other obstructions located on overland transportation routes. Gross vehicle weight limits can also be a challenge. Many primary roads (in the United States) have a maximum weight limit of about 40 tons (or 80,000 pounds) and secondary roads often have weight limits much lower. These limits may increase the difficulty of transporting more than one component in a single container, which may increase the cost of transporting some components and/or increase an impractability of transporting more than one component in a single container. Some wind turbine locations are situated in remote and difficult to access areas. Typically, a truck is used for the final leg of the transportation, and large, heavy, bulky loads can be difficult to navigate along winding or steep roads. For example, a wind turbine located along a winding, steeply graded mountain road can be very difficult to reach with oversize and heavy loads.
Accordingly, a need exists in the art for a more economical and logistically simpler way to store and transport wind turbine components.